Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN (1888PressRelease)
August 31, 2008 - AJS Promotional Media, LLC has changed all that with the launch of their web site www.SavingsBoard.com.
www.SavingsBoard.com is different in a number of significant ways.
LOCAL – The site contains only coupons of Cincinnati-based companies; you won’t run into coupons from regional chains that aren’t in the Cincinnati area. Thus the visitor isn’t wading through coupons from businesses that aren’t local.
This is important for the merchant as well; no longer will local businesses be competing for viewership with thousands of national or branded businesses. They will only be competing for attention against other local businesses and in a uniform environment.
ICON ENVIRONMENT – The site uses small icons placed on a bulletin board setting. The icons are used to give all sponsors on a board an equal opportunity of viewing. Branding is still established through user-reviews and search capabilities, but we want all our merchants to have equal opportunity for a “stumble-upon” and not be drawn to a logo or branding.
GROUPED – The site group’s its coupons by type of merchant, such as Apparel, Restaurants, or Furnishings. No more searching through page after page of random unrelated coupons, now you just go straight to a page with coupons from the subject area of your choice. This ease of finding useful coupons means that shoppers will return to the site time and again to see what kind of deals are being offered in the community, increasing the sites effectiveness for the merchant.
TARGETED TRAFFIC – The lead that is generated through the site is impressive, to say the least; a SavingBoard lead is a local resident that is seeking the products and services you provide and at the time you’re offering them. In addition, they are searching for coupons and savings, which shows the desire to shop immediately. What’s best is that a hot lead like this costs less than a penny a piece, making it useful to small businesses as well.
Merchants can have one or more coupons in one or more categories, increasing the likelihood of a consumer finding exactly what they are looking for. However, the categories chosen must reflect the merchants’ products and service.
BUSINESS ORIENTED – While most coupon sites have only businesses targeting the individual consumer, www.savingsboard.com will have one page dedicated to business-to-business coupons. This is something no other coupon site has ever attempted, but gives businesses who sell to businesses the opportunity to increase sales through coupon marketing. In the millennium of the entrepreneur, B2B promotions is an important, but neglected, element in online coupon sites.
SEARCHABLE – Visitors to the site can search the site for all coupons offered by a specific merchant. If, for example, Joe’s Pizza has different coupons for different specials the visitor could search for “Joe’s Pizza” and then would see all the coupons for that store, allowing them to select the exact offer that best suits their desires. Other coupon sites do not have this feature, which forces shoppers to search through dozens of pages looking for a coupon or merchant that may not even be on the site.
GUARANTEED RESULTS – AJS Promotional Media, LLC guarantees that the Board in which hosts the merchants’ coupon receives a minimum of 5000 targeted hits within a month. This means that a merchant may receive multiple months of free advertising if SavingsBoard is unsuccessful at any time, removing all risk of failure and even turning our possible failure into a success for the merchant. No other coupon site is willing to guarantee targeted traffic in this manner and certainly not willing to sacrifice for results.
DIRECT ACCOUNT MANAGER – Another unique feature of www.SavingsBoard.com is that the merchant will have a dedicated Account Manager to work with. Normally on a coupon board you are dealing with some impersonal voice on the phone or email contact, but not here. Here you deal face-to-face with a real live human that you can interact with who is working for the merchant’s success.
GREEN – The only time paper is involved is when the consumer prints out the coupon to take to the store. This is better for the environment in so many ways, and more economic for the merchant.
www.SavingsBoard.com was the brainchild of Cincinnati native Andrew Stephens. Andrew came up with his idea for this new web site after hours of frustration looking for coupons on the web. “After registering to dozens of sites and receiving thousands of spam mail from doing so, searching through countless coupons that had no relevance to his needs, and wasting time and money finding fraudulent coupons in the search I felt like online couponing needed a much more convenient system if it is to grow in a world of newspaper and direct mail coupons.
It was this constant time-consuming search for meaningful local coupons that lead him to the realization that something better was needed. He saw that current coupon sites were not organized, so he knew that was imperative. The need for an inexpensive marketing venue for small business is also missing from current sites, leaving the consumer with far fewer choices in local businesses, so Andrew decided to make placing a coupon on his web sites inexpensive so that the smallest of budgets could handle it and be profitable.
He also wants to make it effective for merchants, so he encourages participants to make their offer special and unique. By making an exclusive offer we are able to retain traffic to the site and develop a community of strong shoppers that will in turn benefit the merchant and sales. You’ll have to visit the site and look at the coupons to see what the local merchants are willing to do to get you in their doors.
“After reviewing my likes and dislikes of current couponing websites, I developed a design to offer a simple "digital bulletin board" where users can find local coupons and savings without the monotony of "click and scroll" databases.” Pick the category that fits your needs and all the relevant coupons are available on one page with minimal scrolling.
The local aspect is highly unique and of tremendous advantage to local merchants and consumers. The big chains can utilize any of the bulletin board sites, but small and medium local merchants have no place to offer on-line coupons that has effective results. This gives the local meat market, car repair, hair salon, or whomever the opportunity to offer promotional coupons some place besides the Sunday newspaper and direct mail circulars. It gives shoppers the opportunity to maximize their shopping experience by supporting local neighborhood businesses.
“I wish to provide a simple and clean environment for users to locate local merchants and exclusive discounts.” To make it a web site that people would return to time after time, he took stock of all the frustration and wasted effort he had encountered in existing coupon sites and fixed the problems. Thus the site is clean, neat, and exceptionally easy to use as well as functional.
Sales have begun and the results are highly encouraging; “After I explain the low cost and the guaranteed traffic . . . it’s pretty much a “no brainer” for the merchant. Where else can you find this quality of a viewer at a comparable price?”
Cincinnati, being Andrew’s hometown, is the first to experience this new local coupon site but more cities are on the horizon. Cleveland, Dayton, Louisville, Indianapolis, and Nashville are all in the planning stage for future rollouts; but all major metropolitan areas are fair game as far as he’s concerned. “I want to open doors for new job opportunities to use Savingsboard’s innovation to enrich the local economy to it’s furthest potential”
Visitors to the site will find it exceptionally easy to navigate, and even easier to find a useful coupon. When they go to the site there will be a listing of all the categories, just click on the category that is of interest and look for relevant coupons. The visitor will see a single page with a number of icons, just by rolling over the icon the visitor is able to see who the merchant is as well as the offer. Click on the icon and you are taken to a page with a printable coupon to use at the merchants store.
"Welcome to the new era...where you, as a shopper, can search, find, and obtain a coupon or other discount for your specific needs in a matter of seconds…Welcome to www.SavingsBoard.com.”
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